Yurii Vlasov

Dr. Yurii Vlasov is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, holding tenured positions in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. He serves as the John Bardeen Endowed Chair and is Inaugural Professor at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. At UIUC, he founded the Integrated Neurotechnology Lab, focusing on silicon-based neural probes, in vivo neurobiology, and machine learning for neural datasets. Prior to academia, he led IBM's Silicon Nanophotonics project for 15 years, driving its commercialization for datacenters.

• Education: MS in Biophysics (1988, University of St.-Petersburg), PhD in Physics (1994, Ioffe Institute)

His research spans three threads: Neuro-engineering (nanofluidic/neurophonic probes), Neuro-biology (in vivo brain activity mapping), and Neuro-informatics (machine learning for neural networks). Recent work in ACS Nano and Lab on a Chip demonstrates attomole-level neurochemical detection using silicon nanofluidics. His innovations in droplet microfluidics and optogenetics have been featured in over 100 invited talks and 300+ patents.

• Scientific awards include National Academy of Engineering membership, Scientific American's Scientist of the Year, and multiple IBM Technical Achievement Awards. He is a Fellow of APS, IEEE, and OSA.

Dr. Vlasov teaches core courses in semiconductor devices, silicon photonics, and neural interface engineering. His lab's silicon microfluidic platforms have enabled breakthroughs in neurochemical sampling and implantable probe fabrication, supported by NIH BRAIN Initiative grants (UF1NS107677, RF1NS126061).